Commentary: Some positive perspectives of the midterm elections 2018

Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law, politics, and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington, DC, and can be followed on Medium. https://medium.com/@tdianu

By Tiberiu Dianu

The midterm elections of 2018 are not over yet, but here is what we can say for sure as to how things will develop two years from now until the 2020 general elections (when President Donald Trump will be re-elected).

The liberals and mainstream media wanted everybody to believe that in 2018 there would be a Democratic tsunami wave. There wasn’t.

In the 1994 midterm elections, Democratic president Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats, 8 Senate seats and 10 governorships.

In the 2010 midterm elections, Democratic president Barack Obama lost 63 House seats, 6 Senate seats and 29 governorships.

In the 2018 midterm elections, Republican President Donald Trump lost just over a couple dozen House seats (confirming the history precedents), expanded robustly his Senate seats, while the number of governorships remains split. More importantly, the president won governorship races in swing states Florida and Ohio, which will be extremely beneficial for his reelection in 2020.

So, no tsunami in 2018. Rather than a blue wave, this was a “green wave.” The Democrats pumped-in extraordinary amounts of money to little or no avail. In Texas and Georgia, for instance, their contenders for Senate and governorship lost.

Sure, the liberals and their media will keep on bragging until 2020 about their House small-margin takeover. But what will this, in fact, mean?

Despite the president’s temporary and relative defeat in the House, there is a silver lining here, too. The House Republicans were never loyal 100 percent to the president anyhow. Many of them were RINOs, Never-Trumpers and moderates, not on the same page with the president’s policies anyway. Most of them decided not to run again for the 2018 midterm elections, starting with the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Does this prove loyalty to the president? I don’t think so. They chose to abandon the president and abdicate from their responsibility to sustain a solid reformation of the American society. They were used to promising their voters for years that they would get things done. And when President Trump actually got things done, they started to hate him for that. Most of their seats were won by Democrats, who managed to get a small majority in the House.

The good news is that the rest of the Republicans, most of them elected on November 6, are now more loyal to the president and he can rely on them. No more Paul Ryans, no more Bob Corkers, no more Jeff Flakes.

There is other good news (which I predict will happen). After the post-election euphoria, the House Democrats will discover that they are not so united anymore after they get the power in the lower chamber. How the newly elected Democratic former military members will get along with their wacko socialist colleagues? It will be fascinating to see.

While the Republican prima donnas will disappear due to the party’s expansion in the Senate, there will be new Democratic prima donnas emerging in the House. Not all of them will want Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House. Not all of them will side unanimously with their party colleagues when legislation is about to pass. Not all of them will demonize President Trump 24/7. And, definitely, not all of them will automatically reject bipartisan deals.

The near future will tell us if, in the end, the temporarily euphoric Democrats will want to take their new job seriously, and legislate, or continue to “resist” (while they are in power), and investigate. Americans will monitor their two-year performance very closely. Americans are good-sense people. Ultimately, what they want is “jobs, not mobs,” “Kavanaugh, not caravans” and “results, not resist.”

To conclude, there are many serious reasons for which Republicans should not feel too pessimistic, while Democrats should definitely not feel too optimistic.

5 COMMENTS

The Dems yearned for power and were persistent enough to get some of it. But the results were far from the expected ones. All former U.S. presidents, by tradition, had lost massively congressional and gubernatorial seats.

President Trump, despite losing the House majority with a couple of dozen seats, has expanded robustly his majority in the Senate. Some key victories in swing states will secure his reelection in 2020.

Even if Republicans are now fewer in the House, they are more reliable to the president than the ones who chose not to run again or who simply lost to their Democratic counterparts. Democrats will have a hard time holding their fragile House majority for the next two years.

I agree completely with the article and I might add that the Democrats will assuredly spend a good deal of time trying to investigate President Trump’s tax returns, continue with the non-existent Russia Collusion etc. All these so called witch hunts will also assure the President’s reelection in 2020. In the meanwhile our shrewd President will continue to govern wisely even if he has to do it by Executive Order.